Maher and Ventura

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
#21

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]EurekaBulldogLaw wrote:

[quote]Scuba19 wrote:

EDIT: The clip wasn’t bad, and I agree with a lot of what was said (on Ventura’s part). We definitely can’t have just a straight-up popular vote because then the country would be run by a few states. This is why the electoral college was put in place, so that the majority doesn’t oppress the minority.[/quote]

You have it backwards; popular vote means that the numbers, millions vs. millions, determine the winner just like any other vote. States no longer matter, only the individual. The electoral college is what gives power to states like California.[/quote]

Actually, I would say the college takes power away from the large states. electoral votes are proportional to population +2 votes. Per person, smaller states have more representation.[/quote]

But surely we can agree that with this system the larger states still wield more power, regardless of the power’s proportion to the population of the state?

At the least they should get rid of uniform electoral votes.

#22

There’s absolutely no reason for the electoral college anymore. It was useful as far as making candidates make stops in states back in the day, I guess, but now everything’s on TV anyway, don’t matter if you’re in New Jersey or Nebraska.

It should be abolished.

#23

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#24

[quote]pushharder wrote:
The electoral college has worked splendidly for 200+ years.
[/quote]

It has not. The disaster in 2000 was enough reason to get rid of it.

#25

Maher is a total fucking asshat.

#26

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
The electoral college has worked splendidly for 200+ years.
[/quote]

It has not. The disaster in 2000 was enough reason to get rid of it.[/quote]

It’s the same concept as “Match Play” in Golf. Whoever wins the most holes wins the game, or in this case, whoever wins the most states wins the election. This way, if you have a terrible hole (state), it won’t really affect your total outcome (votes).

Another example is in competitions, they don’t count the highest and lowest scores for that round.

This eliminates the extremes. For instance, if California and Texas votes 95% for one candidate, the whole election will get fucked up. To get rid of the electoral college for a straight-up popular vote would be extremely fucking retarded.

Men extremely more intelligent than you came up with this system for a reason. 80% of people in the US live in urban areas. If a popular vote were used, people in rural areas wouldn’t be represented. I’m not trying to insult here, but your lack of understanding of the electoral college is no surprise considering other posts I’ve seen of yours. It’s scary that people like you vote.

#27

[quote]Scuba19 wrote:

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
The electoral college has worked splendidly for 200+ years.
[/quote]

It has not. The disaster in 2000 was enough reason to get rid of it.[/quote]

It’s the same concept as “Match Play” in Golf. Whoever wins the most holes wins the game, or in this case, whoever wins the most states wins the election. This way, if you have a terrible hole (state), it won’t really affect your total outcome (votes).

Another example is in competitions, they don’t count the highest and lowest scores for that round.

This eliminates the extremes. For instance, if California and Texas votes 95% for one candidate, the whole election will get fucked up. To get rid of the electoral college for a straight-up popular vote would be extremely fucking retarded.

Men extremely more intelligent than you came up with this system for a reason. 80% of people in the US live in urban areas. If a popular vote were used, people in rural areas wouldn’t be represented. I’m not trying to insult here, but your lack of understanding of the electoral college is no surprise considering other posts I’ve seen of yours. It’s scary that people like you vote.[/quote]

It’s not a lack of understanding dipshit. A place filled with trees and rocks SHOULDN’T be represented as much as a place filled with people.

People in rural areas will be represented- they’ll vote, and that vote will count. But if there’s not enough of them that vote, they don’t get to pick the leader. I fail to see what is so amazingly complicated or evil about that.

This way, you don’t have more people voting for one candidate, but that candidate (gore) managing to lose the fuckin election. The fact that it’s happened twice in this country’s history should have provided incentive enough for them to change it from an outdated, ridiculous system that prevents direct democracy.

#28

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#29

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

#30

Well, damn. Let’s just change the nation’s name to California, or something.

#31

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#32

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]Scuba19 wrote:

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
The electoral college has worked splendidly for 200+ years.
[/quote]

It has not. The disaster in 2000 was enough reason to get rid of it.[/quote]

It’s the same concept as “Match Play” in Golf. Whoever wins the most holes wins the game, or in this case, whoever wins the most states wins the election. This way, if you have a terrible hole (state), it won’t really affect your total outcome (votes).

Another example is in competitions, they don’t count the highest and lowest scores for that round.

This eliminates the extremes. For instance, if California and Texas votes 95% for one candidate, the whole election will get fucked up. To get rid of the electoral college for a straight-up popular vote would be extremely fucking retarded.

Men extremely more intelligent than you came up with this system for a reason. 80% of people in the US live in urban areas. If a popular vote were used, people in rural areas wouldn’t be represented. I’m not trying to insult here, but your lack of understanding of the electoral college is no surprise considering other posts I’ve seen of yours. It’s scary that people like you vote.[/quote]

It’s not a lack of understanding dipshit. A place filled with trees and rocks SHOULDN’T be represented as much as a place filled with people.

People in rural areas will be represented- they’ll vote, and that vote will count. But if there’s not enough of them that vote, they don’t get to pick the leader. I fail to see what is so amazingly complicated or evil about that.

This way, you don’t have more people voting for one candidate, but that candidate (gore) managing to lose the fuckin election. The fact that it’s happened twice in this country’s history should have provided incentive enough for them to change it from an outdated, ridiculous system that prevents direct democracy.[/quote]

Actually, a lack of understanding is exactly what it is. A lack of understanding in regards to what a Republic is. We are not a direct democracy, and that was done for a reason. I really don’t want to get into why a direct democracy is atrocious, it should be apparent. Our elected politicians currently should be enough evidence that voters in general have no idea about politics or the functions of the US government.

The top 5 largest states (in population) account for 36.24% of the total US population while the top 10 account for 53.24%. Do you honestly believe that 10 states should be deciding for all 50? Our system was set up so that the majority doesn’t oppress the minority while giving the minority a voice.

By the way, there have been 56 US presidential elections. As you say, only twice has the winner of the popular vote not been elected. That means this has occurred only 3.5% of the time.

I suggest you do some research on why we have the electoral college system as opposed to a direct popular vote.

#33

Without the electoral college, federal elections would come down to whatever LA, Chicago, and the DC-NYC-Boston metro want, and the rest of the nation would not have much say in the matter. Those three population centers contain 17% of the U.S. population alone.

When trying to gauge the opinions of the entire country, it’s generally a good idea not to rig the system such that a half-dozen specific cities control the entire process. And that’s exactly why we have the electoral college.

In a broader sense, urban areas would dominate elections simply because it’s easier to “reach” voters in a few huge cities than it is to reach voters all over a state, even if there are roughly equal amounts of voters in each area. This might not be that big a deal in a small nation where everybody lives in a city, but the U.S. still has a significant percentage of their population living outside the major cities and they would have no voice in federal elections w/o the electoral college.

If we did away with the EC, the biggest losers wouldn’t be places like Wyoming, N Dakota, or Oklahoma. They already have little influence on the outcome and receive little-to-no attention from the candidates. The biggest losers would be states that have a good chunk of electorals under the current system, but don’t have any huge metros. States like Ohio, North Carolina, or Missouri (St. Louis, MO is the biggest metro of those three states, but it’s only the 18th largest metro in the U.S. and is just over 1/10th the size of the NYC metro alone).